Vegetable food garnishes are used for the decoration purposes and that too, most often, in an uncooked form. This increases the chances of contamination of the food items that they are added to. This research work was performed to isolate Staphylococcus aureus, which is known to widely cause food borne infection and food spoilage, from six different vegetable garnishes. Of the six vegetable food garnishes analysed, four were found to regularly harbour S. aureus as a contaminant. S. aureus has been known to cause food poisoning as well as food spoilage and in case of the former, the course of treatment would involve being prescribed an antibiotic. However, these organisms have been found to be developing antibiotic resistance due to non-adherence to the prescribed time course of antibiotics and rampant use of antibiotics. This has led to wide-spread development of antibiotic resistance in recent times. To check if the isolated S. aureus is resistant to any of the antibiotics, antibiotic sensitivity test was performed. It was found that the tested S. aureus isolates were resistant to at least one of the tested antibiotics. As the organism was found to have been developing antibiotic resistance, an alternative wherein the chances of developing antibiotic resistance is the least, is the use of bacteriophages to combat organisms like S. aureus specifically, without any harm to human beings. This therapy is referred to as phage therapy. To isolate phage therapy candidates, we have isolated bacteriophages from sewage samples against the S. aureus isolates obtained in this study. The cultivated and purified phage therapy candidates were found to be effective against not only their parent S. aureus isolate but also against non-parent S. aureus isolate, thus, proving to have better range and effectiveness as phage therapy candidates. Thus, our studies have shown a novel use of bacteriophages against pathogenic and/or food spoilage causing S. aureus present in food garnishes as a method of phage therapy.
